Albert R. Hunt, Columnist

The High Cost of Wars Past

Remembering America's fallen.

May 26, 2013 at 3:35 PM UTC

Albert R. Hunt is a former Bloomberg Opinion columnist. He was the executive editor of Bloomberg News, before which he was a reporter, bureau chief and executive Washington editor at the Wall Street Journal.

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Memorial Day is an opportunity to recognize not just active or retired members of the U.S. armed services, but also those who came before. Almost half of the 1.25 million Americans who've died fighting for their country were killed in the Civil War, on domestic soil.

It's estimated that at least 618,222 Union and Confederate soldiers died. The casualties were slightly higher on the Northern side. The horror of the carnage was captured by Harvard University President Drew Gilpin Faust in the acclaimed, "The Republic of Suffering: Death and the American Civil War."